How do you make screenshots for your blog articles?

Whenever I write some guides or “how to’s” especially on Blog Tech Tips and on WordPress stuffs, I always include screen shots because I believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. I can understand something better if I see some visuals and I guess it would also apply to other people.

What tool did you use when you had the screenshot of the pages for your last post? Please advise on this one. Ive been looking for good methods for this one but im still using the CTRL+Prinst screen and then edit at Paint.

When I read this question, I smiled. Little does he know, I’m also using the Print-screen + paint combo! Hahaha. So here goes my guide on how I use this combo. ^_^

For this guide, here are the requirements:

MS Paint (If you are using windows as your operating system, you should have this)

Keyboard with a functioning Print Screen key (it’s the PrtSc key)

Step 1 : Find something you want to take a screen shot of

For this guide, I’m going to be using my blog homepage. After you found something you want, press the PrtSC or the print screen key on your keyboard.

Step 2 : Open Paint and Click on Edit->Paste

After pasting you will see this. Now you decide if you want to use this image or just a part of this image.
If you want to use the whole image, Proceed to Step 5.
If you want only a part of the image, Proceed to Step 3.

Step 3: Select the area you want only

For this example, I want to use only the Search box in the left side of my blog.

First let me show you the left panel of paint. The only buttons you need there are the two buttons at the top (star with dashed line and box with dashed lines). After pasting your “print screen”, the “box with dashed line” is activated. You can deactivate it by clicking on that box. You have to deactivate it in order to proceed.

After deactivating it, let’s activate it again.

I’m not playing jokes on you. The star and the box with dash lines act like a highlighter. Earlier, what was highlighted by the box was the whole picture but we only need the search box (or the part of the picture you want) right? So we have to deactivate it in order to loss the highlight on the whole picture and re activate it in order to highlight on the search box.

After you activate it, it’s time to select the part in the picture you want. You can do this by clicking on the top-left part on the “part” and dragging it down to make a box with dashed line around it. The part you want should be enclosed in a box of dashed lines.

After making the box with dashed lines, Copy it or Press CTRL+C.

Step 4 : Paste it on another paint program

You can run two instances of paint in your computer. Just open it again just like how you opened Paint before.

Paste it on the other paint program. CTRL-V.

Step 5: Save and you are done

Congratulations! ^_^ Now all you have to do is to upload it somewhere. I usually upload my pics at imageshack and tinypic since they both allow hot linking! hehe

Note: I use an online tool called Shrink Pictures to resize my pictures since if I don’t resize it, it will wreck my layout! haha

I hope this guide has helped you even if it’s just a simple guide.

Now this gives me an idea, if you want to know something and want me to write a guide for it, just tell me. If I’m able to do it successfully, I’ll make a guide on how I did it. If not, then, I’ll hide from you. haha